72 years ago, the island of Elugelab in the Pacific Ocean disappeared instantly after a hydrogen bomb 6 meters high and weighing 20 tons released an explosive force of up to 10.4 megatons.
On November 1, 1952, the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb nicknamed “Mike” in a series of nuclear tests called Operation Ivy, according to Interesting Engineering. This is the first full-scale test with a groundbreaking design by American-Hungarian physicist Edward Teller and Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam. The bomb was placed on a small uninhabited rocky island called Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll – a place of 40 small islands and atolls spread out in an oval shape in the South Pacific Ocean.
Mike quickly unleashed its powerful power. The once very fortified island of Elugelab evaporated instantly due to the explosion, leaving behind a massive crater with a diameter of 1.9 km and a depth of 50 m. The explosion created a tsunami up to 6 meters high, wiping out vegetation on surrounding islands. Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, summarized the test results to President Dwight D. Eisenhower with the words “Elugelab Island has disappeared”.
The explosion created a fireball 5 km in diameter. Within 90 seconds, the mushroom cloud rose to a height of 17 km and increased to 33 km after one minute. Finally, the cloud stabilized at an altitude of 41 km, the mushroom cap had a diameter of 161 km, and the base was up to 32 km wide. The measured explosive force was unprecedentedly large, at 10.4 megatons. A military report quoted witnesses from many ships at sea, saying that the explosion was not easy to describe. Accompanied by blinding light, heat waves can be felt immediately at a distance of 48 – 56 km. A giant fireball appeared on the horizon like the rising Sun, quickly expanding after a moment of hovering.
Mike is a symbol of exceptional engineering achievement, standing 6 meters tall and weighing 20 tons. Although not suitable for deployment as a conventional weapon, its importance is that it is the first nuclear device to create powerful explosive force from thermonuclear reactions (the process of fusing atoms) instead of just using nuclear reactions. Fission reaction (atomic splitting process). The bomb’s functionality was based on using fission to trigger fusion within liquid deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen.
Mike’s appearance resembles an industrial complex more than a traditional weapon. The bomb is placed in a wrinkled aluminum structure, accompanied by a signal tower more than 30 meters high to communicate with the control room located on the USS Estes. Due to the use of liquid deuterium fuel, a large cryogenic plant is needed to maintain deuterium at temperatures close to absolute zero. Electricity for this complex comes from a 3,000 kilowatt power plant.
The Ivy Mike experiment also led to the discovery of two new elements. Not long after detonating the bomb, a convoy of US Air Force aircraft flew through the mushroom cloud, equipped with modified fuel tanks to collect and filter debris in the air. The plane’s filter was sealed with lead and sent to Los Alamos, New Mexico for analysis.
Nuclear scientist Albert Ghiorso at the University of California, Berkeley is one of those fascinated by the scientific potential of the filter. Ghiorso speculates that the filter may contain atoms that have transformed into the predicted, but not yet detected, elements 99 and 100, through radioactive decay. Ghiorso, along with chemists Stanley Gerald Thompson and Glenn Seaborg, retrieved half a sheet of filter paper from Ivy Mike’s experiment. On it, they discovered the existence of elements 99 and 100. In 1955, two new elements were named einsteinium and fermium in honor of Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi.
Nuclear testing on Enewetak Island ended in 1958. In 1977 and 2000, the US military conducted decontamination on Enewetak and surrounding islands. Scientists predict that this island will be suitable for human habitation by 2026 – 2027.